The Mindful Hack is a Web log of Denyse O'Leary, co-author of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (HarperOne August 2007). The Mindful Hack publishes information of interest on the relationship between the mind and the brain. O'Leary also publishes the Post-Darwinist, which keeps up with the intelligent design controversy.

Monday, February 04, 2008

The Charleston Post and Courier's Religion Editor (ret.) Skip Johnson, reflects on what we are trying to say in The Spiritual Brain. About Mario, he says, quite rightly,

... he calls on his fellow scientists to lay down their prejudices, open their minds, study the evidence with today's sophisticated equipment and see where it leads.

The major obstacle preventing such a study, Beauregard contends, is that most scientists who call themselves skeptics — a solid majority of scientists — are not skeptics at all; they are materialists. They are skeptical and often downright hostile to anything that smacks of religion, mysticism or spirituality, but they'll readily accept as fact almost any unproven materialist explanation if it seems reasonable. Anything that indicates humans might be more than biological automatons ("meat puppets"), or that otherworld explanations of some phenomena might be real, could shatter some of their most cherished dogmas.

I hear the sound of dogmas shattering on a daily basis, actually. Science is not confirming materialism. What's out there (and in us) is much richer and more interesting.